The Language Barrier
by slytherinish
Summary: Draco winds up in the hospital after receiving an injury that renders him deaf with Harry as his healer.  When he can't hear Harry speak, he'll have to find a new way for them to communicate...


**AN**: I wanted to try a little HPDM and this is what I ended up with. Hopefully you give it a go and let me know what you think when you get to the end. :)

.oOo.

Harry sat next to a wheelchair-bound patient considerably less at his ease than he normally was while performing his healer duties. The reason was very simply that the patient was Draco Malfoy.

The bloke had landed himself in the hospital after being caught by a group of vigilantes who had been unable to let go of the war and call it quits. While the Malfoy's crimes during the war had been forgiven, there were some who still felt that they had a price to pay. Unfortunately for Draco, they had taken all that he had.

The raven-haired healer looked down on the pretense of checking out his chart in more detail, when truthfully, he didn't want to look at him. He'd been in the hospital for weeks with a concussion and knocked out cold. His only visitors had been his parents. And Harry.

While Harry was visibly uncomfortable, Draco seemed perfectly content to be where he was, as though he'd already accepted his fate.

The blow he'd taken to his head had ruptured his eardrum, rendering him deaf… perhaps permanently. Harry looked sideways at the blonde man who looked quite serene in his chair next to the window. His hair looked silver in the sun and his pale skin seemed somehow brighter than the ashen color it had been when the paramedics had brought him in.

Harry considered telling him so, but Draco wouldn't hear.

"How do you feel?"

There was a long pause before Draco seemed to get the sense that he was being spoken to and looked up at Harry, who felt somehow small under the grey gaze. Draco shook his head sardonically and reached up to scratch at the stitches still healing under the white bandage around his head. He dropped his hand. He'd remembered that he shouldn't.

This time, Harry didn't look away and focused instead on the man's slender hands… the way they moved smoothly through the air with a grace that he knew he'd never possess. He'd spent the past few weeks next to the man's bedside, without really understanding why. He'd memorized his sharp angles and his aristocratic features that weren't perfect but were a damn sight closer than any other mere mortal could ever hope to be.

Harry had never noticed before how his eyebrows didn't match his hair, or how his hair didn't lay quite flat at the crown of his head, making a few silver strands flop in his face that Draco was forever pushing away. He'd never noticed how fragile he seemed when he was feeling especially reflective, or how easy it was to tell when he was because his eyes seemed to focus on something far away that Harry couldn't see.

Harry always wanted to make him look at him again.

Draco had been learning sign language from one of the helpers at the hospital and was slowly mastering it through practice that Harry couldn't understand. He waved his hands around fluidly with such finesse that it was almost alluring. Harry didn't want to think about what it meant that he found Draco's handicap endearing.

"I stopped hating you… a while ago. Sixth year." Harry didn't know what he expected to accomplish by trying to communicate with a deaf man, but it made him feel better to say it anyway. "You… I could have helped you." He knew he had a horrible complex about saving people, but he'd never been able to rid himself of it.

Draco smirked and signed something that Harry couldn't understand, though he was sure it was probably better like that. Still, he memorized the movements as though hoping to read into them like an obsessed adolescent girl who dissected the words a boy she liked had said over and over.

Harry ruffled his already messy hair and Draco's eyes raked over the chunks that stood on end with a perfectly arched eyebrow. The healer bit his bottom lip under the bonde man's scrutiny and wondered what he saw. He was a wreck compared to the unearthly sight next to him, even if the unearthly sight _was_ in a hospital gown.

The healer put his clipboard down and moved to stand behind his patient. This was the time of day when he cleaned his stitches and re-bandaged it. This was the time of day when he had to touch Draco and convince himself that his hands were shaking because he was afraid of the _lawsuit_ the Malfoys would slap him with if he messed up in even the slightest.

The healer unwound the bandages slowly and noticed that Draco had closed his eyes. Harry's throat felt impossibly dry as his fingers accidentally grazed the man's forehead, which felt like ice. It always did, even though his body temperature always read as normal. His hands smoothed over the pale hair and Draco signed something again, perhaps telling him off for getting a bit too friendly.

Harry bowed his head and examined the stitches quickly, which of course, were fine, but he took his time anyway before wrapping the cotton bandage around his head again. As he dropped his hand away from his finished work, his fingertips accidentally grazed against Draco's cheek and Harry heard an almost inaudible gasp tumble past the blonde's lips. "Sorry, sorry…"

Draco reached up to wrap his hand around Harry's wrist and yanked harshly until Harry's face was leveled with his. Cold, grey eyes fixed him with an intense stare that feels almost _hot_ despite the icy nature of his look and the apology Harry had been about to make again was lost in the back of his throat. Draco looked down quickly and his thumb brushed against the inside of Harry's wrist in what couldn't _possibly _have been an accident.

Harry felt a strange leap somewhere behind his ribcage at the action and he looked surreptitiously over his shoulder as though checking to see if his supervisor was walking past… as though they'd been doing something _obscene_.

Draco's fingertips came to rest under Harry's chin and his face is tilted back toward his wheelchair until he didn't have a choice but to look at him again.

Draco smiled a bit sadly before he reached for the notepad and pen they'd been using to sparingly communicate with each other over the past couple of weeks. Harry's heart hammered against his chest as he wrote, because damn it, his _handwriting_ captivated him too.

_Wish I remembered what your voice sounded like, Potter._

It didn't mean anything at all, of course, but Harry was already making it mean something. Draco wasn't finished however, and Harry watched his pale hand move across the page.

_Wish you'd fucking learn sign language so I'm not sitting here flailing my hands around all by myself._

Harry smiled at that.

_There are other ways-_

Draco looked up at Harry with a curious little grin on his lips and Harry found himself mesmerized by the shape of them. The blonde finished his sentence.

_There are other ways we could "talk."_

The speech marks are drawn in with such purpose that Harry closed his eyes at the sound of Draco's deep indents in the paper. Harry licked his lips and this time, looked over his shoulder for a legitimate reason before picking up the pencil himself and writing a simple response in the form of a question.

_How?_

Draco focused on the word for a long moment before looking back up at Harry and moving his hand up to his face in one fluid movement. His thumb brushed against his cheekbone almost reverently, as though he'd been wanting to for a very, very long time while the rest of his fingers felt featherlight against Harry's skin.

Harry felt sure that his face was already flushed with color and the inside of his lip was surely bleeding from being bitten for so long. It was clear that Harry was not going to be the teacher in any sense of the word.

Draco looked over Harry's face and Harry noted that right now, Draco's eyes were not looking far away at all. They were looking at him now, clouded over with a fire that Harry had never seen there before. It was intoxicating to know he was the one who had put it there.

The blonde closed the distance between them and pressed his lips against Harry's carefully, as though _he _was the fragile one and pulled back a little. It wasn't long at all before his lips were pressed against Harry's again, but more fervently this time, and Harry reciprocated with whispered words and reassurances that are incoherent even to him.

This was a language that he intended to spend a lot of time speaking with Draco.

And they'd both need _a lot _of practice. Harry grinned against Draco's lips.


End file.
